Our project has taken several unexpected turns since the day we first started our planning.
After learning about curation tools in class, Amy, Katie and I began the process of collecting/curating games and activities to use with our Kindergartners during math centers. In order to allow for more academic choice, we wanted to have a selection of activities that were appropriate for Kindergartners and in which students could be relatively independent while we worked with small groups.
This part of our project is still in the development phase as we have only just recently begun our math centers routines. In the weeks to come, we will be fine-tuning the routines and activities that we are introducing to our students. Cathy will be helping us to develop a website from which students will be selecting online games to reinforce concepts taught.
As our project began to unfold, we found ourselves wishing that our Kindergartners could have access to ipads for math centers as they are much more intuitive and easy to manage for young children. So, as an additional component of our project, we decided to write a YEF grant proposal for ipads in Kindergarten.
Unrelated to math centers, but certainly a pertinent component of our project, we have begun "tweeting" with our Kindergartners. We all now have a Twitter feed on our classroom blogs. At the close of each day, together with our students, we come up with a few short phrases that help to describe our day. These are meant to be conversation starters for families and so far they LOVE it! We have received wonderful feedback from parents. Thank you to Todd Abbott for the idea!
Finally, we started a You-Tube channel for the Kindergarten team on which we have been collecting and organizing short but powerful videos that reinforce what we are teaching in class. This, I believe, has been the most immediately gratifying component of our project. All six K teachers have been adding to the channel and benefitting from it daily.
Our project has really been a 4-part endeavor and I am feeling great about what we have accomplished and where we are headed. From here on out, we will be seeing our math centers come to fruition and hopefully see positive effects on our students as we will be better able to differentiate our instruction.
